talk(1) - NetBSD Manual Pages

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TALK(1)                 NetBSD General Commands Manual                 TALK(1)


NAME

     talk -- talk to another user


SYNOPSIS

     talk person [ttyname]


DESCRIPTION

     talk is a visual communication program which copies lines from your ter-
     minal to that of another user.

     Options available:

     person   If you wish to talk to someone on your own machine, then person
              is just the person's login name.  If you wish to talk to a user
              on another host, then person is of the form `user@host'.

     ttyname  If you wish to talk to a user who is logged in more than once,
              the ttyname argument may be used to indicate the appropriate
              terminal name, where ttyname is of the form `ttyXX'.

     When first called, talk sends the message
           Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
           talk: connection requested by your_name@your_machine.
           talk: respond with: talk your_name@your_machine

     to the user you wish to talk to.  At this point, the recipient of the
     message should reply by typing

           talk  your_name@your_machine

     It doesn't matter from which machine the recipient replies, as long as
     his login-name is the same.  Once communication is established, the two
     parties may type simultaneously, with their output appearing in separate
     windows.  Typing control-L `^L' will cause the screen to be reprinted,
     while your erase, kill, and word kill characters will behave normally.
     To exit, just type your interrupt character; talk then moves the cursor
     to the bottom of the screen and restores the terminal to its previous
     state.

     Permission to talk may be denied or granted by use of the mesg(1) com-
     mand.  At the outset talking is allowed.  Certain commands, in particular
     nroff(1) and pr(1), disallow messages in order to prevent messy output.


ENVIRONMENT

     If the TALKHOST environment variable is set, its value is used as the
     hostname the talk packets appear to be originating from.  This is useful
     if you wish to talk to someone on another machine and your internal host-
     name does not resolve to the address of your external interface as seen
     from the other machine.


FILES

     /etc/hosts     to find the recipient's machine
     /var/run/utmp  to find the recipient's tty


SEE ALSO

     mail(1), mesg(1), who(1), write(1)


HISTORY

     The talk command appeared in 4.2BSD.


BUGS

     The version of talk released with 4.3BSD uses a protocol that is incom-
     patible with the protocol used in the version released with 4.2BSD.

NetBSD 6.1                      January 7, 2007                     NetBSD 6.1